December 7, 2011

Okay I'm lagging in the blogging department but not in the Christmas fun. In fact, the reason I haven't blogged the past few days is because we've been TOO busy. Five out of six of us have colds now, so I think we over did it a bit. Anyway, let's get caught up on the Days of Christmas!

Day 3: We made Candy Cane Playdough, another Pinterest find. It was so easy, and it would make a cute gift. The inspiration came fromThe Artful Parent, although ours wasn't completed quite as gracefully.

JZ and JM love helping me cook, so I assumed making playdough would be a blast. Neither boy showed any interest whatsoever. Bah humbug, I made it myself. I usethisrecipe from HowDoesShe.com when I make playdough.

1 cup flour

1 cup water

1/4 cup salt

2 tsp. cream of tartar

1 Tbls. vegetable oil

food coloring

Dump all the ingredients in and stir over medium heat until the dough forms a ball. Then remove from heat and allow to cool on wax paper.

I gathered all of the ingredients.

I dumped them in the pot on the stove. I doubled the recipe, because I wanted to give some away. I took dinner to a friend who recently had a baby that day, so I made some playdough for her older children.

JM helped me add the ingredients before running off to play. (Yes he is dressed like Woody. We do quite a bit of dress up and imaginative play. That was his Halloween costume from 2010, so it barely fits him anymore. He still loves it, and I think he looks adorable in it.)

Here it is cooling on the wax paper.

You might be asking why one pile looks orange. Good question. There is a perfectly logical answer. Since JZ and JM weren't really into the playdough making I tried to hurry and get it done. After the red was done I quickly tossed all the ingredients in the pot to make the white. I wanted to get it on the wax paper cooling before the babies woke up from their nap. In my haste I added red food coloring again. Whoops! Since I had already doubled the recipe I didn't want to make another batch of red. I decided to add yellow food coloring to make a batch of orange dough. The babies woke up shortly, so I made the white later. Given my mistake we didn't have time to add the glitter. Here is our finished product. It still turned out nicely, and we had a lot of fun playing with it later.

Day 4: We are traveling to a few places this month and won't be around much, so Mike and I decided not to decorate this year. With four young children it would take too much time and energy (two things we don't have a lot of), so we decided to just skip it. My parents invited us over to decorate their house, because they love watching the boys get excited about the lights and tree.

Day 5: My sister, brother in law and adorable nephew were in town for the weekend. Every December our family goes to a local neighborhood that goes all out for Christmas. Each house has a theme, and all the neighbors really get into it. Some houses have popcorn or hot cocoa. A few of the houses have really cool train sets running which, of course, are a huge hit with JZ and JM. This year we couldn't go to that neighborhood together, because they don't start their festivities until next weekend.

Instead we decided to go to a big event in San Diego called December Nights. Apparently everyone in San Diego had the same idea, because we sat in traffic for a good hour and a half before calling it quits. We drove toSeaport Villageand walked around for a bit. My dad disappeared with the big boys, and I found them here:

No wonder JZ and JM always want to go with Grandpa.

The babies were content snuggling with us.

Day 7: We went toDisneyland to see all the holiday decorations. It wasn't crowded at all which was a blessing. I don't have any pictures from our day at Disney, because as you can imagine with five kids four and under (five counting my nephew) all of the adults had our hands full.

We continue to be busy with Christmas excitement, but we've slowed down a bit after the weekend.